


Where the Clouds Never Go Away

by Polexia_Aphrodite



Series: Gone for Soldiers [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Resolved Sexual Tension, Surveillance, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 17:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polexia_Aphrodite/pseuds/Polexia_Aphrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She tugs him back against her, her hands roaming across his shoulders. Pressing his face against her shoulder, Steve breathes her in deep. She smells like gunpowder and Chanel. She smells like home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Clouds Never Go Away

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little plotless fluff. Hope you like it.

They're scattered when the signal comes in from Fury to link up on video feed at their respective headquarters – Steve's in Berlin, Natasha and Bucky's in Kiev, Tony's in Los Angeles, Thor's in Albuquerque, and Bruce and Clint's in New York.

Fury tells them they'll be meeting up in London – all except Bucky, who will carry on in Kiev. He runs through the mission: manning a surveillance unit outside the heavily-bugged apartment of Antonin Dobrev, the notoriously violent head of an international smuggling ring, a target far out of the purview of average S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

"Stark and Barton have first shift," Fury barks at them through the feed, "Rogers and Romanoff second, Thor and Banner third." His expression darkens for a moment, " _Anyone_ tries any funny business in my surveillance unit, they answer to me."

On the screen, Steve sees Natasha's eyebrow arch and her lips purse in annoyance. They both know he's talking to them; Fury hasn't really been on their side since they started getting too close last year. But Tony makes a crack about he and Clint keeping it in their pants, Bucky and Bruce laugh, and Steve lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

In the past few weeks, Fury's been sending Natasha out with Bucky, and Steve out alone, but he doesn't mind it. She's the only one he would trust to take care of him. They've been apart for three weeks, and even the sight of her and Bucky on the video feed makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

After Bucky came back to them, after the tangled mess of his mind was sorted through, rinsed out, and put back together again by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s shrinks, Steve found out that they were still keeping him in his cell. Unable to stand the thought of him in that bright, sterile room, even with the doors unlocked, Steve invited (forced) him to move into his Brooklyn apartment. He tries not to give into false hopes for a return to anything resembling the life they shared together before the war, before the serum.

At least until they parted for this latest assignment, things had been tolerable – Bucky's still prone to long, blank stares that give Steve the creeps, and more than once Steve's had to wake him up from awful, screaming nightmares. But it's still so much better than not having him at all.

*

By the time Natasha arrives in London, by the time she gets to the rendezvous – Fury's surveillance van parked across the street from Dobrev's flat – she's had time for little more than a quick shower. On the long plane ride, during the shorter taxi ride, on the late-night walk to the rendezvous, she stubbornly turns all her thoughts to the mission. She doesn't think about Steve. She doesn't think about all the nights she's spent wishing he was in her bed, warm next to her, with his hand between her legs instead of hers. She doesn't.

She taps on the van's back door and hears the mechanical whir of a camera as it swivels to take her in. Tony opens the door and she steps in quickly, stooping to fit.

He gives a low whistle when he sees her face. One of her eyes is blacked. A shallow cut extends along the cheekbone below it. Before she can close the door behind her, Clint stands.

"This is my stop," he announces, stepping out onto the street. He gestures towards Natasha's black eye. "Nice shiner," he says gruffly, before he wanders off into the darkness.

As she takes the empty seat next to him, Tony pouts at her. "He hasn't been any fun since you started boinking the captain."

Natasha shrugs, staring at the monitors in front of her, "He'll get over it."

It's another five minutes before Steve knocks and steps into the van, a white plastic bag with red lettering in one hand. Tony chastises him for his tardiness and threatens him with imaginary demerits.

Natasha gives him an appraising look as he steps in and takes a seat next to her. He doesn't look any worse for the weeks he's spent in Berlin.

"Is that—" she reaches for the plastic bag before he can hand it to her. Natasha groans appreciatively as she pulls out cartons, opening each until she finds the one she knows was meant for her.

As she unceremoniously pulls out chopsticks and shoves them into the noodle-filled container in her hands, Steve rolls his eyes, "You're welcome."

He looks at her for a long moment; Tony watches him watch her, watches Steve's brow furrow and his eyes narrow.

"What the hell happened to your face?"

She shrugs and mumbles, her mouth full, "Somebody punched it."

Tony snorts and stands, bending over to fit in the low-ceilinged van. "Well," he says as he opens the back door and steps outside, "I'll leave you two lovebirds to your sweet nothings."

The double doors are barely closed when, alone with him, Natasha gives up the pretense of not needing him. She sets her noodles aside and straddles his lap. She kisses him hard, her mouth is warm and insistent, her tongue spicy-hot as it slides against his. Rolling his hips up, Steve grabs her hips to pull her down against him, the rough friction of denim and zippers making her muffle a moan against his mouth.

When she pulls back, her lipstick is gone, the color high on her cheeks, her hair tangled in his hands. Dimly, he knows what he must look like on Fury's all-seeing cameras: dazed and love-drugged, his mouth smeared with red. He runs the pad of his thumb along her lower lip and she sucks it into her mouth, making him gasp and shudder underneath her.

She tugs him back against her, her hands roaming across his shoulders. Pressing his face against her shoulder, Steve breathes her in deep. She smells like gunpowder and Chanel. She smells like home.

"I missed you," he murmurs, his voice muffled.

Natasha's jaw clenches. She hates it when he says things like that – things that make her want him so much she can hardly see straight.

"I…me too."

He glances up at her, his blue eyes hooded, his pupils blown black, "Did you, really?"

She gives his shoulder a smack. "Don't fish," she scolds before pressing her lips to his cheekbone, "You know I did."

"Where can we go?" he murmurs into the joint between her neck and shoulder, because all he can think about is getting her out of the tiny van, because he needs her too much and he hasn't been this hard in weeks, "All S.H.I.E.L.D. gave me was a closet at headquarters."

She smiles, her breath ruffles his hair, "Can't go anywhere right now. Fury's got us stuck here for four more hours."

He groans. It's the worst news he's gotten all day.

She kisses his forehead and moves back to her seat. He gives her a dark look as he pulls his jacket off his shoulders and over his lap. She smiles coquettishly and hands him a carton of takeout.

"How did it go out there?" he asks, unwrapping his chopsticks.

She gives him her usual careful, guarded look. The look she uses when she knows the truth will only worry him.

"We got the job done."

"Is he going to be okay on his own?" Just the thought of Bucky out there, alone, makes him anxious and heartsick.

"He'll be fine," she nods, and she sounds so sure he can't help but believe her.

They settle into their old, easy rhythm: he says stupid things to make her laugh, and she regales him with news about the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill is supposedly dating. The minutes tick by slowly, from midnight, to one, to two in the morning.

After an hour, Steve starts hoping Dobrev will wake up and do something, just to make him stop thinking about how much he wants to hold her. He starts to wonder if Fury – or maybe God – is testing him.

Around hour three, it happens. Dobrev wakes up, makes a few calls, and before they know it, his whole damn syndicate is on the video screens in front of them. Natasha radios the team, and they break it up with backup from S.H.I.E.L.D. The kind of chaos and mayhem that erupts is the kind Steve and Natasha have mastered together, and they fight back-to-back, taking heat from all sides.

In the end, of course, the good guys win; Dobrev and his cronies are taken in by S.H.I.E.L.D. and the team heads back to headquarters.

In the middle of the fight, Dobrev clocked him hard, and, once they're back in the debriefing room, Steve lets Natasha fuss over the deep gash on his forehead until he sees Clint's hundred-yard stare. Suddenly self-conscious, Steve brushes her aside, tells her it'll heal on its own.

*

After the debriefing, Natasha tells him to grab his stuff, leads him out onto the street and into a taxi. When they pull up in front of the Ritz London, Steve gives her a skeptical look.

"Fury put you up _here_?"

She smiles confidently, "Fury put _us_ up here. In case you didn't notice, we did pretty good back there. I told him we were worth it."

He can't help smiling back.

They storm through the empty lobby, picking up their keys and rushing up to their room, barely making it inside before pulling at each other's clothes and falling across the oversized bed in a tangle of limbs.

He's barely started, only just begun to work his hand between her legs, his mouth at her breast, when she goes off like a tea kettle, wrapping herself around him frantically, clenching against him, chanting his name. He smiles up at her, surprised, and she blushes.

"Told you I missed you."

They get three rounds in before dawn, take hot showers, and have two full English breakfasts sent up to their room. By eight-o-clock, they're fast asleep. They hang up on two wake up calls, turn off their cell phones, and refuse to answer the door when Fury practically knocks it down.

For a little while, at least, the world can wait.


End file.
